We investigate whether a bank’s performance during the 1998 crisis, which was viewed at the time as the most dramatic crisis since the Great Depression, predicts its performance during the recent financial crisis. One hypothesis is that a bank that has an especially poor experience in a crisis...

Banks are closing branches at an unprecedented rate. In various countries up to four out of five branches have been closed, while in the US over 11,000 branches representing eleven percent o its peak stock in 2009 have been closed so far. To differentiate between various explanations for this...

Most regulators grant contingent convertible bonds (CoCos) the status of equity. Theory, however, suggests that CoCos can induce debt overhang, thereby, increasing the cost of issuing equity. First, we theoretically investigate how the extent of this debt overhang varies with bank...

We investigate whether bank performance during the recent credit crisis is related to chief executive officer (CEO) incentives before the crisis. We find some evidence that banks with CEOs whose incentives were better aligned with the interests of shareholders performed worse and no evidence...

This paper identifies simple conditions for monotone comparative statics of a unique equilibrium in the Akerlof-Wilson model. Separate conditions apply to trade volume and price. Trade volume increases when supply becomes both stronger and more elastic. In contrast, price decreases when supply...

We solve the problem of optimal securitization for an issuer facing heterogeneous investors with arbitrary time and risk preferences. We show that the optimal securitization is characterized by multiple nonlinear tranches, and each investor gets a portfolio of these tranches. In particular, when...

We identify frictions in the market for liquidity as well as bank-specific and market-wide factors that affect the prices that banks pay for liquidity, captured here by borrowing rates in repos with the central bank and benchmarked by the overnight index swap. We have price data at the...

We argue that there is a connection between the interbank market for liquidity and the broader financial markets, which has its basis in demand for liquidity by banks. Tightness in the interbank market for liquidity leads banks to engage in what we term “liquidity pull-back,” which involves...